


the boy who blocked his own shot

by green_postit



Category: X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Minor Character Death, Self Confidence Issues, Self-Acceptance, Self-Esteem Issues, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-05
Updated: 2014-09-05
Packaged: 2018-02-15 19:44:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,263
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2241126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/green_postit/pseuds/green_postit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He doesn't look so terribly different from all the other boys. It's simply a stroke of dumb, genetic luck that he's asked to join Mensa when he's eleven years old.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the boy who blocked his own shot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



> as usual, [spikeface](http://archiveofourown.org/users/spikeface/pseuds/spikeface) made everything better

Alan Turing kills himself on June 7th, 1954. 

He was the father of computers, pioneered artificial intelligence, made leaps in mathematical biology, morphogenesis, and singlehandedly cracked the Nazi code that ended the Second World War—but because he loved a man, the British government arrested him, humiliated him, poisoned him. He swallowed a cyanide pill that he hid in an apple, left his body for the maid to find the next morning. 

They destroyed him even though he saved the world.

And he was _human_.

Hank learns early that hiding is the only protection.

\--

When he's twelve, Hank makes the mistake of bringing Mrs. Johnson—the newest teacher in all of Elgin Crest—a shiny red apple the same color as her bottle-dyed hair before homeroom starts.

She's the kindest teacher he's ever had. She doesn't treat him like a child, seems to recognize his intellect as a gift rather than a burden. She accepts his gift with a pleased smile, thanks Hank in a maternal, sugary voice that sends delight rushing through him

Then Lenny Samuels—the biggest bully in all of Elgin Crest—has to ruin everything.

He points and laughs, announces to the whole class that Hank's _in love_ with Mrs. Johnson. Everyone shrieks with mocking laughter, singsong _Henry and Mrs. Johnson, sitting in a tree_ until Mrs. Johnson slams her ruler on her desktop and gives Lenny detention for a week.

In trying to save Hank's self-respect, she inadvertently makes the situation so, so much worse.

After that, the boys in his grade make elaborate kissing sounds whenever he's near, push him in the dirt, steal his milk money and bloody his nose when he tries to push back. He's called _freak_ and _Teacher's Pet_.

They do all of this without ever even seeing his feet.

\--

He doesn't look so terribly different from all the other boys at Elgin Crest.

He's polished his shoes, pressed his pants, keeps his hair neatly combed. If you lined up every boy in the school, Hank wouldn't even really have stood out—is average height, has plain brown hair and plain blue eyes.

It's simply a stroke of dumb, genetic luck that he's asked to join Mensa when he's eleven years old. 

Hank learns quickly that the other boys don't like him correcting them, that teachers like it even less. All the same he can't help giving the right answer, finds himself heard no matter how softly he mumbles.

He's bullied mercilessly for the year it takes him to graduate.

\--

He expects Harvard to be different from Elgin Crest High School in Dundee, Illinois.

It's not.

The bullies are bigger now, wear leather jackets and ride motorcycles, call him 'Kid' as an insult, ruffle his hair with their heavy hands. He's far too young to attend any of the off-campus bars and nobody wants to _babysit the germ_ for group projects. 

Harvard was supposed to be his time to fit in, to finally make like-minded friends. Harvard was supposed to be the place where he wasn't a freak for being so intelligent, where students— _the future scientists of America_ —would be able to look at him and see a peer not the freaky Teacher's Pet with monstrously deformed feet. 

He showers in socks, alone late at night.

\--

After he's torn through Cabot's pathetic selection on mutation, Hank begins hypothesizing about his deformity.

His feet have to be an accidental genetic mutation from the radiation at the power plant his father has been working at for twenty years, though everything he reads on those exposed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki differs from his own situation.

His feet are perfectly functional—prehensile, actually—and everything he reads harkens a genetic evolutionary impediment—as if certain exact markers in his DNA refused to evolve past the primate. They look almost exactly like those of a gorilla or an orangutan. 

They pain him mercilessly when he traps them up in shoes, but his dexterity in both remains on par with that of his left and right hands. 

As an experiment, he decides to attempt to simultaneously write four separate parts of the same essay with four separate pens tucked between his toes and hands—is almost done with each part with little effort and minimal cramping. He feels a sudden, unnerving wiggle of pride.

Then he sees a reflection of himself in the dorm mirror.

Lenny Samuels and his gang of bullies were right.

He is a freak.

\--

The professors force the older students to involve Hank, _force_ the older men and women to accept his work even though he's better than all of them.

Group analysis and assignments are a constant stress. The other students reject his corrections and suggestions, tell him to _shut the hell up_ no matter how much he insists they're wrong. 

Eventually Hank is paired with Richie Williams—the only student in the entire university who's too cool to give a damn about academia. Richie's a slacker-greaser burning through his distant father's money to spite him, shows up to the classes he even bothers attending midway through the lecture and uses the butterfly knife he keeps tucked in his metal-tipped boot to scratch vulgar language into the desk.

He's got a signed picture of James Dean he taped to the cover of his biology textbook and rides the exact motorcycle Dean's character did in _Rebel Without A Cause_. He's constantly surrounded by the prettiest girls and plays backseat bingo with a new queen every Friday night. 

He's a bull of a man, he's Madison Avenue—he's so utterly, inhumanly breathtaking that Hank is certain Richie's just like him—has a secret he wears right out in the open. 

Hank knows— _knows_ —if he can get Richie to think he's the bees knees, make Richie his _friend_ , everything will get better. 

So Hank does all their group work—every single section of it—alone in his tiny cramped dorm room while Richie and his greaser townie friends with the slicked back duck butts and hand-rolled cigarettes sneak into the female dormitories and have sex all night long.

He gets his group the best marks in the school, yet they still mock him, punch his arm, blow cigarette smoke right in his face and laugh at his requests to sit with him until spittle flies out and hits Hank's glasses.

\--

In high school, he learned the hard way that other people are exceptionally cruel.

In university, he learns he isn't much better.

\--

Puberty is a fickle, cruel creature.

At fourteen, he undergoes a growth spurt that puts him a full head above even the tallest males on the Crimson basketball team. 

Every bone in his body aches desperately; his muscles cramp and his skin stretches, keeps him up all night with the pain. He swears he can feel the bones lengthening, bites his tongue bloody to keep from screaming. 

He's so sore he even takes his shoes off, spreads his toes wide. Standing upright becomes a feat. For a solid week, the only relief Hank finds comes from suspending himself upside down, feet clamped around the lintel of his closet. 

Being upside down feels right, somehow.

It's the story of his life.

\--

The growing pains last exactly a month to the very second.

All at once, Hank's body stops aching. In the precious aftermath, Hank sags against his wall in relief, stretches out and enjoys the airy, light sensation buzzing in his limbs. He feels stronger—larger.

And then the headaches come.

\--

P.T Barnum popularized freak shows in 1842.

He gathers together people with extreme physical deformities and makes them exhibitions. 

He hires fire-eaters from India, sword-swallowers from South America; has a Swedish man afflicted with skin so scaly and dry it resembles that of a lizard, Irish twins conjoined at the hip with three arms between them, a heavily tattooed woman so thin she resembles a walking skeleton that only eats glass, and a legless and handless German magician he sits on a velvet pillow and has entertain horrified passersby. 

He has two men: one so tall his knees reach most people's ears; the other so short he's mistaken for a child. There's a woman that can lift a cart well over her head and another with a beard that reaches her breasts. 

Barnum starts pulling the wool over people's eyes and claims to have the tail of a feejee mermaid, shrunken monkey heads cursed from tribes in the Rainforest. He sells monkey paws and says they grant wishes. 

Later, Barnum founded a traveling circus with James Bailey in 1875.

Once all the freaks are purged and replaced with elephants and colorful birds from the Orient, they bill it The Greatest Show on Earth.

\--

Everything goes spectacularly downhill his final semester at Harvard.

He's a day way from arguing his first thesis to the dissertation committee and his head throbs from a headache he's had for a solid week. He's been muddled and stressed, has been confusing his subjects and references and the frustration has left him feeling testy, curt—borderline rude.

It doesn't help matters when the final group discussion for neurobiology was assigned and he sees the names of Richie Williams and two of his slacker pals right next to his. Hank's been too concentrated on climbing the uphill battle against the pounding in his skull—doesn't have time to do four assignments. _Won't_ do four assignments.

"Have our parts all done by Monday, ya dig?" Scott Fuller announces, slaps Hank hard on the shoulder.

He and Richie start laughing—obnoxiously—and Scott flicks his cigarette butt in Hank's direction, hits him right on the cheek. 

Hank's temper flairs. 

"No," he snaps, voice raised dangerously. Richie and Scott halt in their tracks. 

"What was that, _kid_?" Richie stomps over, hackles raised.

"C'mon, guys, don't let the oddball rattle your cage," Seth Godwin pipes up in Hank's defense, slaps Richie's shoulder.

Hank doesn't need Seth to defend him. He's put up with Richie's snide remarks and rude comments and humiliating patronizing for far too long. He's the only damn reason Richie and Scott are even still in university.

"Cat got your tongue, germ?" Richie mocks, polished black hair far too shiny under direct sunlight.

"You're a goddamn idiot," Hank spits, puts every ounce of conviction he can muster behind his words. 

He looks Richie right in the eyes—realizes right then and there his eyes are light green; realizes further that it's the first time he's made eye contact with the man in all the years he's known him.

"Oh, _Kid_ ," Richie smirks, shrugs off his impeccably polished leather jacket, "I've been waiting a long damn time to wipe that holier than thou look off your face."

Richie winds up, swings his arm forward in a punch that he puts all his strength behind. The blow is aimed right at Hank's nose—would surely break it—but the pain never comes.

Every instinct in Hank's body seems to come alive in that one second. His left hand catches the punch easily and when his fingers curl around Richie's knuckles, Richie's agonizing scream blasts the headache right from the very recesses of his throbbing brain.

Richie drops to his knees, clutching his hand at the wrist. His palm and fingers are instantly inflamed, mangled like crumpled up used napkins.

Hank does the only thing he can think of.

He runs.

\--

Hank stops running once he's in his dorm room, the door firmly locked, and there's a chair wedged under the handle.

He stares at his hands in horror, can still feel how easily Richie's bones splintered, can still hear how the marrow and blood and ligaments squished and popped like soap bubbles. 

It takes approximately twenty-five pounds of pressure to snap a human bone—a mere twelve to break any of the metacarpal bones. Hank didn't exert any force or pressure whatsoever. Richie's hand shattered upon contact.

He snaps his fountain pen clean in half with the slightest of pressure from his thumb and index finger.

His oak desk follows a similar fate a minute later.

\--

The next time he loves someone, they're going to be kind—and he's never going to hurt them.

\--

He graduates _egregia cum laude_ at fifteen with a PhDs in both biochemistry and engineering and two master degrees in genetics and mathematics.

When the taxi pulls up to his house, he sees two men in neatly pressed trench coats waiting outside his door. They turn simultaneously at the sound of the taxi door shutting.

"Henry McCoy?" the man on the left asks, face flat.

" _Doctor_ Henry McCoy," the other corrects easy-breezy. He's got a very round face with prominent eyebrows, smiles like a shopping center Santa Claus. 

They're from the CIA.

Hank is immediately terrified that they've somehow found out about his feet, about what he did to Richie's hand—are there to bring him in for testing and experimentation where he'll be labeled and tagged like an animal.

Instead, they offer him a job.

\--

He stops sleeping at seventeen.

It happens so gradually that Hank doesn't even notice. 

When it's finally brought to his attention, he's putting the finishing polish on the schematics for his own spin on the SR71. He wants vertical takeoff, and more even than the two seats on the trainer aircrafts. Six, he thinks, sketching—six is an effective team.

People aren't meant to work alone.

Suddenly, Donaldson is pulling the mechanical pencil from between his fingers.

"Jesus Christ, McCoy, go home. Get some rest. You've been here for days."

Hank blinks at him, feels slow for the first time in his life. When he looks at the calendar on the wall, he's shocked to discover it's been nine days since he started the plans, nine days since he can remember sleeping. 

He leaves, hunching against Donaldson and Fergus's funny looks. But when he steps into his plain little apartment his brain is still racing, wants to create. He pulls out a sketchpad and works on the mathematics behind turning the antenna sitting in the courtyard into a radio transmitter or an electro-mechanical rotor cipher, only stops when he runs out of pages in the pad.

It takes three weeks for the panic to set in when he still hasn't slept a wink and somehow shows absolutely no symptoms of sleep deprivation. He feels perpetually refreshed and alert.

He thinks about seeing a doctor, but ultimately decides against it—knows there are no secrets in the CIA. Instead, he holes himself up in in his lab, draws a vial of his own blood and begins researching.

He has a control copy of his blood from when he first began working for the CIA, examines it under mass spectrometer and comes to the horrifying realization that his DNA is mutating at an alarming rate before his very eyes. 

He remembers how easy it had been to crush Richie's hand, how _good_ it had felt in that hot rush of adrenaline.

He starts researching a cure for himself—can fix this—fix _himself_.

\--

His coworkers call him _Ivy League_. On a very good day, they'll call him _McCoy_.

He feels his youth like a physical presence whenever he proposes ideas for further research and development to a group of men three to four times his age, to some of the sharpest minds he's had the pleasure of conferencing with.

They don't all ignore him, but they're never pleased when his proposals are approved for further development.

If only one of them was like him—was better, somehow. He doesn't dream anymore but he finds himself thinking about it in the shower. All he would need is one person, even one idea more brilliant than his, something he would never have thought of.

It's a blessing, really, when Agent Platt moves him to a covert CIA research base. When he tells Hank it's to investigate the application of paranormal powers in military defense, Hank starts tinkering to his hearts content.

He's got absolute freedom to create and Platt allows him to dismantle and reassemble absolutely any devise in the entire building. In his first month, he creates a sensor that can detect even the slightest atomic shift in the environment, a reflector that so light sensitive the stealthiest of infiltrators will light up like a Christmas tree. 

In the bowels of Platt's top-secret facility, he thinks he might be content.

\--

And then he meets the Xavier siblings.

\--

Alfred Kinsey publishes _Sexual Behavior in the Human Male_ in 1948.

The report is the first major publication to examine human sexual behavior and brings sexuality and sex into the academic spotlight for the first time in American history. 

The reports were banned from libraries and bookstores, make the blacklist along with _Lady Chatterly's Lover_ and _Lolita_ and _Catcher in the Rye_ —were cited for the use of obscene language and sexual depravities. 

Kinsey is called a radical, a madman. 

He details everything from the benign—masturbation and orgasm—to the racy—disciplinary kinks and multiple partners—to the extremely taboo—bestiality and pedophilia—and casts an academic eye upon all practices, manages to organize and file away sexuality into neat rows and boxes, suggests that human sexuality can be measured with something as simple as grid of his own design. 

When Hank thinks about what arouses him, he sees the outline of Marilyn Monroe's nipple through a translucent scarf on the cover of _Playbook_ , but the provocative splay of her legs and the fullness of her breasts are featured as prominently as the thickness of Errol Flynn's arms in _Adventures of Don Juan_ , the smooth firmness of his chest, the sharpness of his jaw.

He remembers the uncomfortable churning low in his belly after leaving _Gilda_ , how Rita Hayworth's beguiling curves and sharp, clear laugher left his eyes transfixed and palms sweaty. It was the exact same feeling that had him left him jealous and painfully, agonizing aroused watching Barbara Stanwyck seduce Fred MacMurray in _Double Indemnity_. 

By Kinsey's definitions, Hank is a perfect three, equally heterosexual and homosexual. 

He learns he's not alone in how he feels. 

He learns he's hunted—hated.

\--

Platt calls him and tells him about some _special_ new recruits he has coming by. _Special_ has always been code for _important_ , so Hank figures they're spies ready to be outfitted with the tracking devices he's managed to miniaturize into a pair of diamond earring and a set of obsidian cufflinks.

But the four people who meet him don't look like spies. One of them is his age, and one of the most beautiful girls he's ever seen. The other has the vaguely arrogant look of an academic—the kind of man Hank has always corrected and never impressed. 

"How wonderful," the new man says, soft and English. His name is Charles. He smiles at Hank, the way professors often do before they realize he knows more than they do. Hank smiles politely, waiting for the inevitable.

And then Charles casually reveals Hank's darkest shame and Hank's entire world jolts to a stop.

\--

Charles tells him he's among friends. _Friends_.

He might be different, but so are they.

Charles looks right down at his feet—down at what's made him so different and hated—and calls them splendid, is so tickled with amusement. He sees the beautiful girl—Raven—smiling without any sense of disgust and for a brief moment Hank wants to impress him, impress Raven. He feels a violent rush of confidence wash over him.

He kicks off the ground giddily, feels the strength in his legs flex like springs until his torso is under his legs, his feet reaching and extending for the model jet suspended above their heads. They clamp on easily. He's perfectly upside down and lightly swinging, the adrenaline singing sweetly through him. 

Raven steps in close, looks at him as if he's a treasure, as if he's something beautiful and wonderful.

She calls him amazing—upside down, disfigured feet on display.

\--

Raven's mutation is a marvel.

She winks at him before her body ripples and she becomes a perfect replica of Agent Platt, does a jaunty curtsy before snapping upright and rippling again. This time, Hank is faced with a perfect copy of himself, though he's never seen his face proudly display such a grand smile. 

She breaks the laws of physics, displaces mass and matter, can replicate anyone on a cellular structure at a single glance. She might be a mimic, but hardcoded in her genes lays the key to changing appearance.

She understands what it's like to stay hidden, the shame and fear of discovery. Charles might have been able to get deep inside his head and learn his entire life in seconds, but Raven has lived with his fear everyday, understands him.

She's so extraordinarily beautiful that Hanks wants to take away her shame. He wants to help her the same way he's been trying to help himself ever since Lenny Samuels called him a freak. 

Over Twinkies and Coke, Hank extracts a vial of her DNA, almost has his first kiss. 

The moment is interrupted and the mood shattered when Erik strolls up, humorless behind the smile. 

Erik reminds him of the Harvard bullies, even though it's clear he hasn't set foot on a college campus in his life. He has none of their gloss, but all of the restlessness, the relentless destruction. In a different world, Hank would crush his hand.

But Charles likes him, so Hank refrains.

\--

Charles calls them all _mutants_ , but it's different from the way Lenny called him _Teacher's Pet_ and Richie called him _Kid_.

Charles says he's a telepath, but in the day that Hank's known him, he's demonstrated so many more abilities than just simple mind reading. He's proud of his mutation, shows it off by making himself disappear and reappear between blinks of the eye, has frozen people mid-step with a wave of his hand. 

He has complete and utter dominion over the minds of every human on the planet, wields his power with jaunty smiles and the confidence born from someone who has never been wrong a day in their life. 

When Charles is strapped into Cerebro and the machine is turned on, there's a brief power surge that makes the lights flicker but then—then the entire room seems to be bathed in Charles's presence. Hank can feel Charles's power leaking back into his mind, feels Charles in his lungs when he breathes in.

It's heady. Charles's excitement fills the room and Hank's chest with pure, sparkling bliss. He's so incredibly powerful and Hank doesn't even think Charles realizes it, how him casting his amplified mind around the world is truly astonishing. 

And Hank helped him achieve that. 

When the coordinates begin printing out in rapid clips, Hank excitedly starts translating the coordinates into specific cities. Raven pins each location on a map. They're a chain, each link as strong as the rest.

In the end, they end up with a list of fifty names, all mutants over the age of eighteen who live within a hundred miles of Langley. 

With Raven by his side, and Charles's ability still thrumming warmly in the back of his brain, Hank feels happy for the first time in his life.

\--

When word gets out that Hank's included in with the new _mutant division_ , the slurs come out in full force.

Hank's already used to jabs and stares. When he walks past, people whisper and stifle laugher.

He spends days analyzing Raven's DNA sample, tries to extract the mutagens that allow for transformation and coax them stable. 

He hasn't quite got it yet, but he will.

He always does.

\--

After a week of searching, Charles and Erik return with four mutants.

Raven insists on a get together, makes Hank carry Oreos and popcorn and bottles of Coke down to the rec room with the gramophone and pinball machines. 

It's liberating watching so many people openly display their powers. They're laughing and munching on snacks, and the mood is upbeat, exciting. Everyone gets a kick out of Raven's shifting, Darwin's underwater performance, Sean's supersonic whistle and Angel's translucent insect wings.

He wants to demonstrate his powers in a way that'll have them all clapping, have Raven smiling that astonished smile at him again. He thinks about lifting up the couch he's sharing with Raven—knows he could probably shoulder the weight easily—but then Alex smirks and calls him _Big Foot_ and everyone laughs and Hank's humiliation paralyzes him. 

He's back to being the reject of the group—a group he _finally_ belongs to, mocked by yet another tough guy in black leather. But then Raven speaks up, cuts Alex down and has the rest of the group laughing at him on behalf of Hank. 

He loves her more than anything, at that moment.

After Alex rips the statue of J Edgar Hoover in half, they crank up the music, start dancing on the furniture. They spill the Cokes across the table and stain the carpets, crush half eaten Oreos under their feet and trample it across the couches, break chairs into chunks trying to crack the layer of molten rock Darwin manipulated his chest into. 

Hank slips his shoes off and starts dancing on the ceiling.

It's the best night of his life.

\--

And then the bodies rain down.

\--

They all have individual training sessions with Charles scheduled every day.

Charles meets him in the labs where he's designing a harness for Alex and a vocal amplifier for Sean. Absolutely anything is possible with the selection of mutations he's working with and he feels securely in his element—is the only one with any practical experience in defensive weapons manufacturing.

Hank assumes their training will be here, but Charles challenges him to a race around the estate, instead. 

He starts talking about man's animal nature, a struggle to conform that he's never had to experience. Charles tells him he's scared of what he could become if he stopped reining in his mutation and he's completely right. His entire life up to this point he's been ridiculed and shunned because of his intellect, yet it remains the one only element of his mutation that he can show off.

He has nightmares about waking up and discovering the mutation in his feet as spread to his legs, his torso. He's read up on all the gorillas and orangutans, knows it's a possibility that if his mutation wasn't genetically dormant, it could lead to a transformed physiognomy or a slow but inevitable devolution.

Hank can't ever let that happen. 

But then Charles puts his hand on Hank's shoulder and tells him to set the beast free.

He's looking at Hank, and it takes Hank the first puzzled moment of his life to determine that his expression is trust.

Hank toes off his shoes, flexing his toes and lets the strength he coils up tight relax, thrum through him.

It's cathartic to feel the gravel beneath his feet, feel the world rip past him in a blur. He taps Charles on the shoulder and Charles's pleased expression makes his stomach clench tightly and all the nerves in his body sizzle with pleasure.

Charles is looking at him like he's magnificent again.

When Alex saunters by and calls him _Bozo_ , Hank isn't prepared for the betrayal that swells up and makes it hard for him to breathe. He had fully let his guard down—was actually pleased with his deformity. Being mocked so maliciously by a fellow mutant—by his _teammate_ —when he's so exposed feels like walking on broken glass.

"He's trying to be friendly," Charles says afterwards, with the gentle self-confidence of a mind reader. "I swear it."

Hank isn't convinced, and is done with high school bullies who occasionally deign to throw him scraps. "He should try harder."

\--

At nearly one a.m. on the third day—when Hank is in the middle of sketching an attempted miniaturization of Cerebo—he sees every piece of metal in his lab levitate three centimeters before dropping back down.

A few seconds later, it happens again. Hank feels the metal clasps on his labcoat and pants rise valiantly before they're released from their magnetic pull. His lab is rattling, a steady up down that mimics the heartbeat of a clock.

Erik.

He goes to see what's keeping Erik awake at such an hour—follows the steady pull of the metal tipped pens in his pocket—and finds himself walking down the only hallway where the dust sheets have slipped from the antique knight's armor they was protecting. Everything from the vambraces to the pauldrons are quivering.

He sees the glow of a light from beneath the door at the end of the hallway, but before Hank can take another step, he's hit with a punch of arousal so strong it nearly takes him out at the knees. He's overheated and shaking, his body zipping with pleasure, heartbeat erratic. 

It feels like the best orgasms of his life all swirled together and injected right back into him. The strength is unbearable. 

It doesn't take a genius to figure out what's happening, but it takes Hank an alarmingly long time to gather himself together, fight off the combined pull of Erik and Charles's powers and scurry back to his lab.

The envy tastes like chalk in his mouth. 

He snaps a lead pipe in half over his knee, as easy as if it were snapping grass.

\--

The next morning, en route to breakfast, Hank sees Erik leaning against the wall opposite his lab. He's dressed in dark slacks and a tight turtleneck, has his leather jacket slung over his forearm.

"Good morning," Hank says evenly, bites the inside of his cheek to keep his face neutral. 

Erik takes him in—bottom to top—his eyes impassive, fingers flexing. He's as cold as the metal he controls, but people never seem to notice. 

"Tin is a very nosey metal," Erik finally says, his voice smug, accent smooth. He flicks his index finger and Hank feels a tug at the buttons on the labcoat he's been wearing since last night. 

Point made, Erik turns, flings his jacket over his shoulder and leaves Hank standing where he is, cheeks flush with heated embarrassment.

Charles deserves better.

Hank will be better.

\--

In 1934, Walt Disney animates the very first feature length animation.

He bases his film off a German fairy tale about the dangers of one woman's poisonous vanity, and the beautiful princess she relentlessly tries to murder. The film ends with the Prince kissing Snow White awake and the forest creatures rejoicing. The fairy tale ends with the witch being tortured to death in iron shoes heated by coals. 

All alone in his lab, Hank takes the serum he synthesized with Raven's DNA and injects it into the dorsal digital vein in his right foot. 

Vanity is only easy when you look like everybody else.

The injection feels cold at first, but he ignores it in favor of concentrating on projecting the image of normal looking toes, arches and heels. 

The change feels like hundred of ants crawling over his feet—a pleasant tickle—and the bones straighten and morph, his skin retracting and evening out, separating and shortening. And then it's completed. 

The rush of euphoria is so strong is nearly makes him cry. He stares down at his perfectly average feet and his perfectly ordinary toes and takes a deep, shaky breath. 

He should have paid more attention to the fairy tale.

\--

Hank watches as Erik deflects Moira's bullet, watches in paralyzed horror as Charles screams and falls in the sand.

The missiles explode in the air—pop like overinflated balloons in the distance—as Erik drops to his knees, gathers Charles tightly in his arms, and warns everyone away from them. He's furious, bestial. He strangles Moira with her own dogtags, looks like he'll have absolutely no qualm using the metal debris around him to pin the rest of them in place.

Even from this distance, Hank can see how frantically Erik is trying to soothe Charles. He's weeping. 

But then Charles says something very quietly, his fingers clutching uselessly at the sand, and Erik's entire posture changes—turns hard—and he allows Moira to race over, check Charles's vitals.

When Erik leaves, it's with Raven at his side.

Hank races to Charles, attempts to staunch the sluggish bleeding, stabilize his back. Charles can't feel his legs, and Erik left them all here to fix his mess, makes them wait an hour for the American destroyer to pull up to shore and send out their chief medical officer. 

He tells them that the bullet severed the Co1 vertebrae—that as far as spine cord injuries go, it's the best he could have hoped for. 

Hank stays by his side until the sedatives wear off and Charles, groggy but alert, learns that—barring a medical miracle—he'll never walk again.

"I don't need a medical miracle," Charles says, his pupils retracted until Hank feels like he's drowning in the blue of his eyes. "I have you."

\--

Charles looks at him like he could give him back everything he lost in Cuba.

All Hank can do is try to make his legs work.

He wishes he could offer something more.

\--

They head back to the manor when Charles is stable enough to leave.

He, Alex, and Sean had been working steadily to ensure Charles could move around in the specialized wheelchair Hank made that doesn't have an ounce of metal in it.

Charles puts on a brave face, but Hank remembers vividly how bright his eyes used to shine, how quick he was to smile. Alex and Sean are relieved to have him back, obey his requests like the attentive students they are.

They do the bulk of the manual labor for the grounds and defensive upgrades Hank employs while he and Charles gut an entire wing and retrofit it for the second version of Cerebro. They spend hours a day together going over paperwork and zoning permits to have the manor turned into a school. They adapt certain wings into training grounds for some of the more unique and volatile powers Charles glimpsed at during his first round with Cerebro.

They convince themselves that everything is fine.

\--

For his twenty-second birthday, Charles has Alex pick up extra cheesy pizza from Pizza Hut and Sean a vanilla cake with blue buttercream icing from the store. His mother sends him a thick green sweater that he keeps folded in the box and immediately shoves in his closet and Alex and Sean pooled together their money to buy him Elvis Presley's _Girls! Girls! Girls!_ and The Beach Boy's _Surfin' Safari_ on vinyl.

Hank knows the records will end up in Sean's collection by the end of the month and he doesn't even mind—is completely touched by the gesture.

They eat the pizza on the balcony and the cake in the dining room when it starts to rain, and after, when Alex and Sean leave to hang out in the city, Hank curls up on the couch and he and Charles watch _The Dick Van Dyke Show_. 

When they're alone, Charles casually slides over a poorly wrapped box that contains a shiny plasma microscope—the latest model from Stark Industries. _Professor H.P McCoy_ is etched into the side in loopy cursive.

He has no idea how Charles could have known he needed a new one—how the former model met its demise in a fit of frustration. Judging by the smirk on Charles's face, Hank will never find out. 

"Thank you," he says, tucks back into his cake in an attempt to subdue his thrilled expression. 

"Think nothing of it," Charles hums happily, reaches over and gently wipes away a clump of icing that caught on his furred cheek.

\--

He's two solid weeks into trying to create an antidote for his faulty serum when he hears the glide of Charles wheelchair. He brings Hank a mug of tea.

"I thought you could use some caffeine," Charles smiles, places the mug by his left hand. Hank is touched, has the same nervous fluttering in his belly when Raven did the exact same gesture.

"There's no need, but I appreciate the offer," Hank replies. He takes a sip to be polite.

He immediately feels the prodding warmth he's come to associate with Charles's telepathy inching up the back of his skull, his powers instinctively furling outwards to sink deep inside. Hank can visualize Charles's powers as an outstretched hand dipping into the still surface of a lake—how easily the fingers can break the surface—and Hank instinctively locks his mind down, turns the surface of the lake to ice and feels a jolt ricochet through his body. He spills some of the tea on his pant leg.

"Absolutely remarkable." Charles's mouth is very red and his eyes are very blue. Hank doesn't know where to look.

"What is?" he asks. He takes the safest route and looks down at the material in his lap.

"Your mind." Charles sounds amused. 

When Hank looks up, he sees Charles smiling warmly. "You've managed to completely block off my telepathy, Hank. I'm trying to get inside your head but I can't." 

Charles looks tickled by the prospect, like Hank is a puzzle.

"I've only ever experienced this once before with Miss Frost, Shaw's telepath—a powerful telepath, mind you."

"Perhaps you're not as all powerful as you believed," Hank jokes lamely. He can still feel Charles prodding the contours of his mind, looking for a crack to slip between. 

"Learned that already, didn't I?" Charles says. For a moment he's rueful, subdued. Hank hates it, hates that he reminded Charles of it. He wants to do something, nearly lets Charles's prodding mind in.

Then the moment passes. When Charles looks up at Hank he's smiling, eyes bright and admiring. "Truly, truly remarkable."

\--

Sean Cassidy is murdered on February 11th, 1963.

He's walking down 5th Avenue when he's assaulted by the three men he'd pissed off at a bar the previous night. He hit on one of the men's girlfriends and then whistled sharply—had the man lose control of his bowels—when he tried to land a series of ill-placed punches. 

Eyewitnesses to the murder say Sean tried to ignore the men, pushed past them and continue on his way, but the second his back was turned, the leader lashed out with a wooden bat. The first blow was to the side of his left temporal lobe, so powerful it crushed through the bone and caved in the left side of his cranium. 

Sean's shriek of pain was so loud it caused New York City's first and only earthquake in recorded history, which resulted in 1.3 million dollars worth of property damage, killed sixteen people, and permanently deafened all eighty-six children in the nearby FAO Schwartz.

His screaming only stopped when they shot him through the throat, left him gurgling and gasping for breath while—as the detective later explains—the assailants finished the job with steel-toed boots.

The windows on the west side of the school bear hairline fractures in the glass from Sean's last cry for help.

No one suggests they be replaced.

\--

Charles only ever cried when others around him were crying. After Sean's death, Charles's empathy begins to leak.

Alex can't bear to be around him anymore—spends hours in the training room he's affectionately dubbed the _war room_ instead. He's the only one capable of going into town for supplies now that Sean is gone and Hank's still blue, and he relishes in the time away from Charles's persistent sorrow.

Hank's been immune to Charles's powers for over a year now, doesn't mind wheeling him around the gardens and discussing logistics for student housing or the construction timeline.

They'll often veer off and discuss genetics or literature. Hank's pleased to finally have a mind as intelligent as his own to debate the topics, and Charles's mood seems to lighten with every passing day. 

They sometimes play chess out by the fountain, but Charles puts an end to that after Hank trounces him for the fiftieth consecutive time. Charles laughs and smiles after every loss, though, and Hank smiles right back. 

Despite all they've lost, the quiet times with Charles in the back garden are some of the happiest memories of Hank's life. 

Charles will often take his large paw in hand after their afternoons together, thumb stroking the soft blue fur once in thanks before he'll wheel away and call the New York education board or the foreman.

Hank is never gladder that Charles can't read his thoughts than in those few precious seconds every day.

\--

As Charles's upper body strength improves, so does his charming playfulness that first made him so appealing to Hank. He's taken to draping his arms along the bannister at the top of the stairs, heaves his body upward in order to shout down whenever he needs Alex or Hank for something.

He's in a frightfully good mood one afternoon, needs the spec measurements for the gymnasium that Hank's already halfway up the stairs bringing to him. 

"For someone I know who can outstrip a cheetah, you certainly are taking your time," Charles taunts. Hank is distracted, tabulating the combined cost for all the repairs and zoning costs, stops midway up and turns to him.

"And for someone who claims to know everything, you sure know no patience."

Charles laughs, high and delighted. But just then, as he's about to respond, the wooden railing creaks before snapping clean in half. Charles tumbles along with it, too shocked to even shout out.

Hank jerks forward, dives off the stairs and tackles Charles mid-fall, wraps all his limbs around him and cushions Charles's delicate head between his chest and neck. He manages to land directly on a glass vase and it's table, feels the vase shatter upon impact and the table collapse beneath their combined weight.

His head connects sharply with the ground, scrambles his brain enough for his shields to drop. Charles gasps turns into a horrified shout. 

"Are you—" Hank starts, is interrupted when Charles grabs his face. His eyes zip frantically, quickly cataloging the cuts on his forehead, the bleeding bump at the back of his head.

"You foolish man!" Charles nearly screams, clenches his teeth. "You could have killed yourself!"

"Are you all right?" Hank sits up, still has Charles pooled in his lap. His head throbs, but Charles is fully pressed against him, so warm and soft and breakable. 

"Am I—" Charles trails off, blinks four times in quick succession. His hands slide from Hank's face to his shoulders, squeezes once before meeting Hank's concerned expression with a dazzling smile.

\--

"I am so, so sorry, my friend," Charles repeats for the fifth time. He's been picking glass out of Hank's back for nearly an hour. Hank can only feel the softness of Charles's hand as they card through his fur, how gentle he's being when applying the hydrogen peroxide.

He's near purring.

The pain from the dull aches and scrapes has already receded, Hank's body already working on repairing the damage. Every gentle swipe of a peroxide laden cotton ball clears the blood from his fur but does nothing for the wound. 

Hank would tell Charles that his concern is unnecessary, but it feels phenomenal to have Charles hands on him, to feel the pulsing warmth of his concern.

Hank wants nothing more than to feel Charles's hand caress his actual skin, wants to experience that so palpably it makes his stomach cramp. 

He needs to finish that serum.

\--

Two months before his twenty-third birthday, Hank finally manages to create a working serum for his mutation, has all the right genomes isolated and tagged and within seconds of injecting himself, he feels his body contracting, his senses dulling.

When he looks in the mirror, he sees himself, not _Beast_ or _Bozo_ or _Big Foot_ , just Henry Philip McCoy, the way nature meant him to be.

He remembers how he used to dream about this very moment, when he'd be able to cure himself of his deformity, how he'd finally be able to stop hiding from society, how he could finally feel normal.

Now, staring back at the blue eyes he'd forgotten he had and the slenderness of a nose that had flattened and flared, Hank hears Raven's voice in his head: _mutant and proud_.

\--

Erik assassinates John F. Kennedy on November 2nd 1963.

Walter Cronkite delivers the news to America with a heavy heart and utter disbelief. He says the shooter was apprehended—that he could somehow control metal with his thoughts—but assures America that the police have him in custody and he's no longer a threat.

Charles turns off the television, wheels out of the living room and disappears behind his bedroom door.

Hank doesn't see him for two days.

\--

Erik is sentenced to life in prison for murder and treason.

Hank's certain the courts would have sentenced him to death if they could find a way to do it without having Erik come in contact with anything metallic.

Charles worries obsessively that more mutants will come out in favor of Erik's radicalism, will violently protest and retaliate. But after four months of silence and Lyndon B. Johnson firmly in office, it becomes clear to Hank that nobody's coming to rescue him. Not even the Brotherhood.

It does mean that Raven is now all on her own, and that keeps Charles up at night. It would keep Hank up too if he could sleep. 

Alex tries to tell Charles she'll be fine, but he's already two drinks into the night and isn't listening.

\--

Whenever Hank feels suffocated by the quiet in the manor—whenever he needs a reprieve from the dour mood—he waits for Alex and Charles to retire for the evening before he slips outside, pulls out Alex's motorcycle, and rides to the closest bar.

At first, he used to head to the places closest to the university, would sip on a pint of lukewarm Schlitz and listen to the students discussing all manner of subjects. He's finally university aged—is finally at a bar and witnessing post-group research project celebrations. Even hunkered in the corner—watching happy people from the outside—Hank enjoys himself.

He starts leaving the house more and more, always finds himself at a new bar that still serves the same terrible drinks and plays the same overly loud music. He falls into a comfortable pattern at the bars—will order a drink and take two hours to finish it, will listen to the students talking until they all leave for the night, will watch the attractive men in tight shirts and beautiful women in miniskirts but never make a move toward either.

\--

William Masters releases a series of papers on human sexual response and sexual dysfunctions.

He's one of the most celebrated doctors and researchers in the United States, and he interviewed and studied nearly seven hundred people trying to get to the core of arousal and orgasm, managed to debunk many inaccuracies about female and male sex organs and behavior.

But in all his research, Masters refuses to include the data of anyone he deemed deviant—claimed any homosexual would spoil his pure data, thus rendering the results unusable. 

Masters was a scientist trying to push the boundaries of biology and psychology, but he refused to accept an entire faction of test subjects. He treated homosexual sex as a malady, as something corrupt.

He's not alone in his beliefs.

\--

The Roman Catholic Bible says God created Adam and Eve and gave them paradise. This paradise was ripped from them when Eve brought about original sin after she ate a fruit from the forbidden tree.

New York City is far from a paradise, but it does have Eden.

Hank accidentally discovers the bar while wandering aimlessly in Greenwich, sees two men walk out with their heads close together, their bodies pressed together at the hip and arm—walks inside shortly after they turned the corner.

He takes a seat in the corner, watches as the men pair off and keep very close, how the few women only converse with each other. Hank's suspicion about the bar is confirmed when he sees two men discretely kiss before disappearing through a door.

"Can I buy you a drink?" comes a voice behind him, jolts his thoughts. Hank turns, faces a man as tall as he is with a mop of curly blond hair and very pale blue eyes. 

He's very handsome, has high cheekbones and a very square jaw. Hank shifts the half empty bottle of beer from his left hand to his right—decides to throw caution to the wind and does his best to channel Alex's effortless cool. 

He reaches over the bar and pours the lukewarm beer down the bartender's drain, turns back toward the man and smiles. 

"Hank," he says in lieu of an order. 

"I'm Isaac." They don't shake hands or break eye contact.

"You wanna get out of here, Hank?" Isaac rolls his sweating glass between his palms. He looks at Hank's mouth from beneath the fringe of his long eyelashes, edges in until their knees touch. He really is very good looking, smells fantastic up close.

"Yes," Hank says—decides to live a little for once, "Very much so."

Isaac smiles, finishes his drink in a long swallow—wraps his fingers along Hank's wrist and squeezes.

"My place is close by."

His directness is flattering. 

It's novel, being the object of someone's desire.

\--

The Vaseline is warm and oily—very slick—makes it easy for the first push of Hank's dick to slip right inside. The immediate sensation borders on too much—actually hurts—before Isaac groans unabashedly, wiggles his hips and Hank sinks in just that much deeper.

It's pleasure—it's absolute pleasure—the heat and the tightness of Isaac's muscles milking him wonderfully, the angle Isaac's tilted his hips urging Hank to start moving. He needs to take his time—make it last—but Isaac is impatient and needy, whimpered over the size of Hank's dick yet still barely prepared himself for it.

Now, he keeps wiggling, pushes against Hank's cock urgently. Something primal—very ugly—rears inside Hank, taunts the beast he keeps caged and suppressed. It wants out, wants to play with the stretch of smooth, unblemished skin—wants to dig in and feast. 

Hank rips his bottom lip bloody on his fangs, battles against the eking transformation that's lengthening his nails, sharpening his sense. 

"Stop squirming," he growls, tightens his grip on Isaac's hip, wraps his other around his neck to lock him in place. Isaac feels brutal-tight inside, starts sobbing and scratching at the chipped paint of the wall. 

It's good—it's horrifically good—but Isaac's not the man Hank wants. He isn't enough to satisfy the beast. 

He imagines holding Charles in his arms—whole and unbroken—the soft little sounds he could fuck from his warm red mouth, imagines how bright his eyes would gleam, so unnaturally blue and magnetic. 

He pounds into Isaac, desperate to make Charles come. 

Isaac screams, stuffs the corner of a pillow into his mouth and arches sharply upward—come spewing from his rigid cock, smearing his stomach and the tangled sheets. 

At once, he can vividly picture Charles's voice ripped raw from pleasure, how his soft pink skin would look covered in marks from his teeth and nails, how his body would seize and shiver—overwhelmed and fucked bruise-sensitive—all at Hank's hand. 

It's a lovely image, one that finally satiates the flickering inside him. 

It's not Hank's first orgasm, but it is the first shared with another person, brought about by the one he left tucked away sleeping in Westchester.

With the lights on, Hanks sees how Isaac's elbows are rubbed red from the sheets, his arms and hips covered with angry red scratches from the claws he lost control of. 

Hank apologies but Isaac flippantly dismisses it—says he likes it when his men have claws.

\--

When the situation in Vietnam worsens in the summer of 1967, the Department of Defense contracts Hank to design and improve tactical gear and artillery.

He's told he'll never see a day of combat—as if it's some great incentive—told that his brain is far too valuable to risk having it shot at in a jungle halfway across the world. 

The DOD gives him a team of fifteen engineers all thirty years his senior and make it very clear they expect results, that the lives of thousands of American soldiers depend on the work they produce. 

He's called _Doctor McCoy_ to his face and _the child_ when his back is turned. He stopped all their snickering and thinly veined contempt when he loses his temper and his mutation breaks free.

He shreds his lab coat and shirt, has Jeremy McGillis—PhD in mechanical engineering—pinned high against a wall by the throat. He stares into the terrified eyes of an old man learning what every child already knows: that monsters do exist in the world. 

He replaces their contempt with fear and it's the most goddamn satisfying moment of his life.

\--

Hank spends the remainder of the 1960s and the rest of his twenties putting the finishing touches on the school.

All in, it takes them six years to complete the renovations. They gather together thirty-four young mutants and six additional professors from all corners of the United States and Canada to be the first official class at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters. 

Charles is in his element. He flares brilliantly whenever he speaks to the students about their new responsibilities, impresses everyone by saying they're the next step in human evolution. 

But when Congress introduces the draft lottery in December, Alex's number is pulled three days from the end of the first term. Within the month, twenty-two of the thirty-four students are drafted and the remaining return home disillusioned and bitter and no closer to unlocking or understanding their abilities.

Charles can't bear to let anyone truly go. He makes the mistake of plugging into Cerebro and casts his mind out further than he'd ever tried before. Hank can see the strain wearing on him, how he starts hyperventilating ten minutes in, how he clenches his fists and suppresses his gag reflex.

And then he starts screaming.

Hank grabs at his arms and he's immediately sucked into Charles's vision. It's pain and suffering and the most unbearable sense of loss. Charles's mind is picking up not only the fear of all the mutants stationed in Vietnam, but the humans, the children cowering under their beds, the soldiers racing out to drag back the limbs of their friends ripped apart by landmines, the torture of young men scooping their own guts back inside of their torn open bellies, begging to God to save them.

Hank rips Cerebro's helmet from his head, severs the link, but it's already too late. 

Charles stops sleeping at nights, works himself up into a screaming panic before his body collapses and he blacks out. Sedation doesn't work—actually seems to prolong the residual empathetic tremors, dragging them out and making Charles suffer without the ability to mentally ward it off.

Hank stays with him every night, watches for the telltale signs, is already at his side when Charles violently rockets upward and clings to Hank's chest. Hank lets down his shields, hopes to give Charles a stable mind to anchor himself to, but the images follow Charles and pollute Hank's mind, too.

Hank tells Charles he will gladly share the burden, but Charles refuses to let Hank suffer with him.

Hank can't bear it.

\--

The serum he invents for Charles is a variation of the one he uses. It binds to damaged tissue and accelerates cell and nerve growth.

The downside is that the serum also temporarily alters DNA, which would most likely lead to Charles losing his telepathy. He tells all this to Charles ad nauseam, makes sure he's fully aware of what Hank's offering.

Charles injects the first dose himself, Hank's warnings still on his lips. 

Within five minutes, Charles starts wiggling his toes—can bend his knees in ten.

"The voices are gone," Charles mumbles, eyes very clear.

He spends the morning shuffling through the gardens barefoot, in a daze. He dips his feet in the fountain with childlike wonder, smiles for the rest of the day.

He wakes up in the middle of the night, screaming bloody murder, tearing at his hair, slams his knuckles against the side of his head. Hank has to wrestle him down, can barely make out the words over Charles's terrified screams. He's hyperventilating—having a panic attack—keeps begging Hank to make the voices go away— _needs_ the voices to go away.

The second injection knocks him out cold—a pinch over the recommended dose just to get him through the night. Before he realizes it, Charles is running through a week's supply of the serum in two days—has to keep increasing the quantity so he can make it through the day without his empathy crushing him.

Hank only wanted to take away Charles's pain. 

He's always making it worse.

\--

In 1964, Gene Roddenberry sits in a meeting with the executives at the Columbia Broadcasting System and pitches them an idea he has for a science fiction series set in the future on a spaceship in outer-space.

CBS rejects his idea, but the National Broadcasting Company doesn't and two years later, _Star Trek_ is born.

 _Star Trek_ is the first show on television to see past race and gender binaries, proposes a future where aliens and humans coexist in utter peace, have intergalactic adventures and save the world. 

The crew of the U.S.S Enterprise often encounter alien species and manage to convey their messages of peace, diversity. The science is mostly flawed and the show is extremely campy, but Hank loves it viciously. 

His favorite episode takes place toward the end of the first season, a brilliant penned drama where McCoy stumbles into a wormhole and inadvertently creates a universe in which the Nazis won the war and subjugate the world. Hank might have been too young to remember the atrocities committed in the war, but he's seen what the scars look like firsthand. 

The episode concludes with Kirk realizing the woman he's fallen in love with must die in order for the world to live. It inexplicably tears at Hank's heart as he watches Kirk make the decision to do nothing to prevent Edith's death, to watch him make the decision to live with the burden of a love lost for the greater good.

Hank deeply empathizes, but still thinks Kirk made the wrong decision.

\--

Hank is leery of Logan.

He tells them he's traveled back in time, about the future genocide of the mutant race at the hands of a killer robot army that was created in the 1970s that use Raven's DNA to become all-powerful.

He tells them the future is a living nightmare where just a handful of the mutants left have banded together to try and stop these Sentinels from obliterating them all—that a young girl with the ability to walk through matter has developed the ability to send people back through time so they can restart the day they're attacked. Logan tells them that the remaining free mutants fighting die every single day, have their powers turned against them only to have that future never exist when the day begins anew. 

It's a fantastical tale, but the hardest bit to swallow is how Charles and Erik lead the rebels together—side-by-side—that Erik Lehnsherr is capable of changing.

\--

It's an incredibly sad state of national defense that all it takes is a teenage track star and an episode of _Sanford and Son_ to break Erik out of the Pentagon.

Peter takes Hank's wrist in hand, cushions his head, and races him outside before security can barge in. Hank goes from inside the Pentagon to standing beside their parked rental in a second—watches as Erik, Logan, and Charles zip into view within a blink. Erik looks especially queasy. 

Hanks immediately hits him with a lifetime's worth of control: kidney, liver, spleen. Erik hits the pavement hard, wheezes in pain as Hank drags him up by the scruff of his neck—forces him to stand. 

He still remembers how easily he could have crushed Erik's trachea before they left for Cuba—how Erik had been utterly powerless to defend himself, to stop him. It was a good feeling.

"Good to see you again, Beast," Erik smiles through his wince, stubbornly stays standing. 

Hank bats him back down to the ground.

\--

Erik's tirade nearly sends them all down in flames.

He accuses Hank and Charles of hiding—of not fighting—says all of this as if he hadn't been locked away for nine years. 

Hank and Charles were the ones scraping together a future for mutantkind, were the ones pouring their time and souls into a school to make sure no mutant ever grew up the way they did—thinking they were alone and unwanted. 

Erik only ever brought suffering and carnage with him, poisoned Raven's mind with his dogma and left Charles to die after he fixed the mess Erik started. He stands for everything he and Charles have worked against for the last ten years and looms almost unchanged over Charles: narrow eyed, lean muscled, with the perfect controlled shave of a man who controls razors with his mind. It's as if time couldn't touch him in that concrete box, while Charles staggers in the shifting airplane, his hair falling messily, clothes almost perpetually smelling of liquor. 

He's staring red eyed at Erik—that's what burns the most.

No matter how many atrocities Erik commits, Hanks knows Charles will still watch him the same way.

\--

The sun is just starting to rise when they approach France.

Logan ambles into the cockpit stretching the stiffness out of his arms, is bafflingly amused whenever he hears the joints pop and bones crack. He looks at Hank like he a stranger—like his mind refuses to reconcile who he will become with who he is now.

It's not a reassuring notion. Hank wonders just how much more he's going to lose.

"When's the last time you slept, bub?" Logan asks, gracelessly slouching in the co-pilot seat.

"August 19th, 1958." It was a Tuesday—just a little humid. 

Logan's laugh is gruff, more a low snarl. 

They ride the rest of the way in silence. Hank keeps catching Logan's long, somber stares and manages not to dwell on it.

He'll ask Logan, years later, and find out in the alterative timeline that he was killed before the Sentinels even went live. 

The President appointed him Secretary of Mutant Affairs and he dedicated his life to fighting against legislation and policies that suppressed mutants—that he'd eventually rein in his temper and neurosis and became the poster child for peaceful cohabitation and rallying voice for all of mutantkind.

He was be dragged out of his house in the middle of the night by a mob of Human Majority protestors that beat him unconscious with bats and club before he was strung up by the neck and lynched.

He didn't once fight back, not even when they hacked off his hands with a machete.

He was left hanging from a street light for seven hours, had the anti-mutant mobs he campaigned and spoke out against and take pictures with his corpse like he was game they'd just hunted in Africa.

Logan had been the one who cut him down.

\--

It only takes one look from Raven to undo ten years worth of his repressed feelings and love.

After she left, it became an unacknowledged agreement in the house to mention neither her nor Erik and Hank and Charles upheld that silent promise for a decade. Yet, the second Charles sees her, he rushes, falls to his knees, strokes her face and hair, and soothes the last of the electric tremors from her body. He's crying—so absolutely content—at having her close after so many years apart that he starts babbling, keeps reassuring her he won't let anyone hurt her, that he's come for her, that he loves her dearly.

Hank watches the two of them—his heart constricting with adoration. 

She's absolutely beautiful—looks at Charles with teary yellow eyes—looks as lost as Hank suddenly feels.

He's so caught up in his own head that he misses when Erik summons the gun on the table to his hand, points it right at Raven and looks as if he has no qualms shooting right through Charles to get her.

Charles blocks Raven with his entire body, looks at Erik with confusion and disbelief while Raven looks on in pained resignation. 

It's unfair—it's so colossally unfair—that Erik gets to have both of them when he wants neither, has throw them both away.

Hank manages to tackle Erik to the floor before he can pull the trigger, but it doesn't stop the bullet from rocketing out the barrel of the gun, curving around Charles's head and embedding itself in Raven from four stories below.

Hank snarls, pushes his mutation past the chemical hold of his serum; triggers the transformation with every intention of ripping Erik to ribbons. 

No matter how hard he tries, he isn't capable of stopping Erik from putting bullets in the people he loves.

\--

If Hank thought punching Erik was satisfying, it's got absolutely nothing on how it feels to slam his body against the pavement, to use his full strength to punch Erik's breakable body, to flip him over and into the fountain and hold him under.

He has every intention of killing him, wishes Erik would struggle just a little harder to make this moment that much sweeter. Erik thrashes, but Hank slams his head against the marble base as hard as he can, watches as Erik's blood starts to swirl in the water. He's scratching at Hank's arms, but he can't feel the sting through the pumping of his adrenaline. 

When Erik realizes that Hank isn't letting him out of the fountain alive, he goes deathly still, starts stretching out his powers and before Hank can squeeze his neck and snap the bone, the sharp bite of metal digs into and under his shoulder blades and _yanks_.

Iron curls around his hips and wrists, squeezes until they lacerate his flesh, and keep him helplessly locked in place.

He was so preoccupied with hurting Erik that he forgot about the press, the flashes of cameras and the steady ticking of video recording. When he looks up, he sees a crowd of people staring back in horror, sees reporters from every broadcasting network in the world relaying his image to everyone at home watching. 

Erik spared his life only because he knew it would be far worse to leave him to be gawked at, to have his mutation displayed and used as fodder to scare young children into behaving.

People scream when he runs past.

\--

Biologically, you are a new person every seven years.

Humans die every day on a genetic level. Every atom in the human body speeds and swaps and exchanges themselves for surrounding atoms and cells undergo such a rapid mitosis that it is scientifically proven a person born yesterday is different on a cellular level from the person they are the next day.

Hank met Charles when he was twenty-one—his third self—when Charles was twenty-eight. He's since then been with Charles for ten years.

He's become almost two completely new people since the day Charles walked into the CIA and made his pulse leap, but every iteration has so far been the same. He still loves Charles with his every whirling atom despite still being a writhing pit of neurosis and self-loathing.

He's going to change that.

\--

Erik commands the Sentinel to kill him and doesn't even have the decency to see his execution through.

Erik still believes him to be the weak, scared little boy that wouldn't fight for what he wants. So Hank fights—fights with his claws and teeth and rends the wires and circuitry from the Sentinel's insides with savage finesse.

When he sees Erik approaching Nixon, he knows he can't let him assassinate another president on live television, jabs six vials of treatment into his thigh and experiences the nauseating rush of his beast being locked away.

The Sentinel leaves, distracts Erik long enough for Raven to clip him in the neck and disable him. Hank immediately runs to where Charles is pinned and injured beneath the fallen debris.

He's never felt weaker, unable to pry the scaffolding from Charles's crushed body. 

For the first time in his life, Hank finds himself wishing for his mutation, would give anything to fight off the overwhelming burn of his serum and transform back into the person strong enough to protect Charles.

\--

Octopuses have three hearts.

Hank believes he does, too.

One will always lie within Raven; will beat for her courage and bravery—her strength. She was the first woman to see him for who he truly was as think him worthy and whole. It might have taken him ten years, but Hank sees that now—sees how he was never broken—and he'll always have Raven to thank for that.

His strongest heart will always belong to Charles, the first truly kind man to give him joy, to give him a purpose. Charles gave Hank peace, a home. Charles didn't see him as a nuisance or a freak or a kid. He's only ever seen him as Henry McCoy, mutant genius with the disfigured feet, called him marvelous and remarkable and challenged him to be greater. They built a life together, side-by-side as partners.

His weakest heart lies within his own chest, will keep beating as long as he lives in a world where Raven and Charles are happy and safe.

\--

Charles might not believe that time is immutable, but some things never change.

Hank watches as Erik disappears, leaving Charles's broken, crippled body clutched tightly in his arms for the second time, watches as Raven looks back at them with tears in her eyes before leaving them, too.

The loss chafes less this time.

\--

They return to the school once paramedics have cleaned and bandaged Charles's injuries.

His right ankle was shattered and he was badly cut along his left leg, but he's in good spirits—jokes about being thankful for his paralysis for once. His modified wheelchair was squashed during the fight so the hospital gives him a clunky old metal contraption with a loose wheel and poor breaks.

Hank will destroy the thing the first opportunity he gets, goes about mentally creating a new model, one that won't leave Charles helpless to outrun danger no matter the terrain. 

"I'm sorry, old friend," Charles says, apropos of nothing. 

"Charles—" he begins, but Charles touches his crook of his elbow with light fingers, clears his throat and continues.

"Please forgive me for being so foolish." When Hank looks down he sees tears glistening in Charles's eyes. "I'm afraid I've treated you rather appallingly these past few years."

"You've done nothing that I haven't allowed, Charles," Hank replies honestly. 

Charles scoffs. "I'm supposed to know better."

Hank goes to adjust his glasses but remembers how he threw them aside before battle. He doesn't even really need them anymore; they're just one more layer to hide behind. 

He's finished with hiding.

"I'm not your student anymore, Charles." He looks straight into Charles's expressive blue eyes. "I love you and I'm not going anywhere." 

He leans in, gently pulls Charles's face to his and kisses him. He only means for it to be a brief, tangible demonstration of his feelings, but then he feels the solid pressure of Charles's mind against his own—lowers his shields a fraction—and lets him sink deep into his mind, sinks that much deeper into the kiss. 

Charles moans, pulls Hank painfully tight against his thin chest and licks his way into Hank's mouth.

Hank can feel Charles's affections wash against the portion of his mind they're sharing—experiences a looping thrum of gratitude and a pure, unfettered buzz of arousal that nearly wipes Hank's mind clean with its intensity.

He's saved the world twice now, but right here, right now, with Charles in his arms, it's the first time that Hank truly feels like he's won.

\--

Time might be changeable but there are two things that Hank knows to be crystalline in their certainty.

The first is he's been in love with Charles Xavier for eleven years and will continue to be for the rest of his life. His home is wherever Charles is; their purposes were joined and sealed the day they officially signed the charter opening their school.

The second is that curled up by Charles's feet, Charles's fingers calmly petting through his fur, he knows that his is who he was always meant to be.

Lenny Samuels had been right from the very beginning, but not about being a freak.


End file.
